G7, Russia adopt anti-terror pact, avoid sanctions Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 10:00:07 PDT PARIS (Reuter) - The world's major powers closed ranks to combat terrorism Tuesday, urging other nations to join forces with them but sidestepping a dispute over U.S. demands for sanctions against what Washington calls "terrorist states." Foreign and security ministers from the Group of Seven industrial nations and Russia approved a list of 25 measures to defeat terrorists around the globe. "We will not stop in this united effort until those responsible are brought to justice," U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno told a news conference after the five-hour meeting of the so-called P8 nations -- P being for political. The package included pledges to reinforce police cooperation and training, share intelligence, ease extradition and legal assistance, dry up sources of funding and weapons and strengthen national anti-terrorism legislation. The ministers also vowed to prevent extremists from using the Internet computer network to plan attacks and spread bomb-making instructions. Participants heard Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy recount how his 11-year-old son had shown him where to find such content on the Internet. French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette said the meeting had achieved its two objectives, "to adopt concrete measures and to send a very clear signal to the international community and to public opinion that the leaders of the P8 are strongly determined to act shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand." Under-Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff said the U.S. delegation had not raised President Clinton's contentious call for "strong sanctions" against four states he says support terrorism -- Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan. France, Japan, Britain and Germany all made clear they would not accept U.S. legislation to punish foreign firms that dealt with such countries. "We did not discuss country-specific cases ... We recognize the fact that some of legislation passed in the United States recently has encountered opposition among our trading partners," Tarnoff said. French Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre, who co-chaired the meeting, said before it began: "The American analysis is a bit simplistic and a bit outdated. If we look at the phenomenon of terrorism today, we can see that it's more complex." He cited the bomb attack that killed two people and wounded 110 at the Atlanta Olympic Games last Saturday as evidence of what he called "home-grown terrorism" without outside help. State-sponsored and extreme-left terrorism were largely a thing of the past, and the international community now faced two virulent new forms -- regionalist extremism and religious militancy -- which did not have state support, Debre said. The United States offered extra proposals to tighten airport security and mark explosives chemically so bombers can be more easily traced, which the other countries accepted. Axworthy voiced widely shared alarm at the use of poison gas in recent attacks in Japan, including on the Tokyo subway. "We are beginning to see terrifying signs of what the future could hold if we don't take strong action. Terrorists are now getting access to weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, even nuclear weapons," he said. "It's (a threat) that really has a doomsday quality unless we act now," he said. The United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia agreed that solving regional conflicts and stabilizing crisis areas was the best way to tackle the roots of terrorism. "There must be no safe havens," German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said. The ministers agreed their experts would hold follow-up meetings to draft a new international convention to prevent the abuse of political asylum to plan, fund or commit terrorist acts and to coordinate security in public transport. Japan said it would hold an Asia-Pacific counter-terrorism seminar by next June including Asian and Latin American experts. [End]